With North Korea threatening to detonate a nuclear weapon over the Pacific Ocean as its leader and President Donald Trump casually bandy about threats of thermonuclear annihilation, people in the US and Japan are understandably starting to worry.

After all, US intelligence agencies revealed during the summer that they believe the North will soon possess a nuclear warhead-tipped ballistic missile capable of striking most of the continental US. In fact, chances are good that, with a little luck, the North already has missiles in its arsenal that could probably strike a large area of the western US.

But, aside from nuclear threats looming in North Korea and Iran, the worst hurricane season in the Atlantic in more than a decade, and the continuing rumblings underneath the Yellowstone caldera, which could signal a potentially humanity-extinguishing eruption, it’s understandable that Americans and Japanese are increasingly worrying about their safety, and have begun purchasing more “doomsday preparation” gear to help assuage those fears.

Now, Reuters is reporting that survivalists across the US are clearing store shelves to stock bunkers in anticipation of Earth’s final chapter. A few survivalists who spoke with Reuters said that North Korea’s threats, and the images of the destruction caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, have inspired them to stock up.

House fires are actually pretty rare. If you don't cook meth the chances of getting a house fire really plummet. In our county around half the house fires and all of the hotel fires are meth lab related.

Loss of income is important, unless you can't lose it and sickness gets all of us.

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Stercutus wrote:House fires are actually pretty rare. If you don't cook meth the chances of getting a house fire really plummet. In our county around half the house fires and all of the hotel fires are meth lab related.

Loss of income is important, unless you can't lose it and sickness gets all of us.

Must be an Anchorage thing. What with all the wood stoves and that. Most of the fires here are listed as started by "installed equipment"

taipan821 wrote:but more often than not the preps are for more common and mundane things.

Although I wholeheartedly agree with you and hope for the best, it probably would NOT hurt to consider important targets in your region and circular error probability as it relates to missiles and such. Radiation detection and treatment of radiation sickness are discussed in a lot of short guides online that people can brush up on and of course develop one or two high speed exit strategies (if that is even possible where you live given populations and such) just in case.
After, mostly, it would be a return to more common and mundane things...

In an early class on game theory, I remember the professor using an analogy of two bullies playing chicken, driving muscle cars at each other. Imagine that both of them have wild hair and crazy eyes. Both are very angry and one of them is on narcotics and collects Barbies. Who will swerve first?

Edited to add: Not trying to add to the month(s) of turmoil or sell any more fear since I think that nearly everything that can be done behind the scenes is being done but it doesn't hurt to be prepared for everything. Snowballs can't be rolled back uphill.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

It's only common sense because they are now doing it. 3/4 of them or more will stop prepping within a year if the situation with Nork stabilizes and next years storm season is mild. They will then refer to us and the time they had started to prep as "remember when I went a little wild and did all that crazy survivalist prepping stuff ? They will slide back into a state of oblivious and expect some half imagined THEY to rescue them if needed

taipan821 wrote:its like mad max, people think prepping is for the 'end of the world' but more often than not the preps are for more common and mundane things.

blizzards, cyclones, bush/forest fires, drought, flooding etc don't sound as cool as nuclear war, zombies, widespread killer diseases (though that one is valid) so not much attention is given to them.

Pretty much, though I consider myself fortunate to live in a place where wildscale disasters are uncommon. We don't really have wildfires or earthquakes (yet?), nor hurricanes, and while there's not much prep you can do for a tornado beyond "have a safe place and get there," the path of devastation is typically narrow enough that the next neighborhood over is fine and sends people with chainsaws to help you. But power goes out in winter sometimes, and you'd better be prepared to keep warm even if you're snowed in. AO is a huge consideration.

Nice to see the subject becoming normal again.
The more who prep the better.
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What is AO ?

In my day, we didn't have virtual reality.
If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.
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Preps buy us time. Time to learn how and time to remember how. Time to figure out what is a want, what is a need.

taipan821 wrote:but more often than not the preps are for more common and mundane things.

Although I wholeheartedly agree with you and hope for the best, it probably would NOT hurt to consider important targets in your region and circular error probability as it relates to missiles and such.

regarding missiles, I live next to one of the biggest military bases in Australia, so if a nuclear missile attack occurs on the base I'm sorted (dead).

Oh, that makes sense.
I'm just an old cook, sometimes the acronyms get past me.

In my day, we didn't have virtual reality.
If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.
-
Preps buy us time. Time to learn how and time to remember how. Time to figure out what is a want, what is a need.

I've done the Loss of Employment thing...was a mere hump in the road for me...in fact, the biggest impact was the idiotic health care laws messing with my tax returns the following year.
I've also dealt with societal collapse in a way...South Africa in the late 90's. Cops were all but non existent. Good luck getting a cop, fire dept or ambulance to your house within 2 hours. Subsequently, crime skyrocketed. The economy has been on the verge of collapse for almost 2 decades...so food, gasoline and even electricity can be hit or miss to acquire. Rolling blackouts are common (daily) to the point where the National electric company posts a schedule on their web page...when the National phone company has the internet and servers running.
So yes...prepare for socio-economic downturn or collapse and you'll be prepped for most other scenarios.
As to the artie...their ideas of common sense are a bit "uncommon".